Album reviews: Rolling back the years with Kylie and Elton John
Kylie Minogue: Disco.
Kylie Minogue, Disco (****)
It may be some time before any of us are anywhere near a dance floor again. So it is ironic – and obviously bittersweet – that 2020 should be a classic year for disco records. As the lockdown took hold, Dua Lipa and Jessie Ware released peerless suites of downbeat bangers, followed, over the summer by Co Wicklow’s Róisín Murphy.
And now comes perhaps the most affecting of the lot. Kylie Minogue, having ventured into heartbroken country rock with 2018’s Golden, now sets her controls for the heart of the discotheque with her 15th studio album.
Minogue finished Disco on her own, in a home-built studio, early in lockdown, and the sense of slow-burning melancholy we all felt defines tracks such as Magic and Say Something. Surfing on tides of digitally processed melancholy, Disco is sad and quite sublime. And yet, as always with Kylie, it is illuminated with humility and optimism too.
With Elton John’s farewell tour interrupted by the pandemic, the singer has ventured into his vault of unreleased recording and emerged with a grab-bag of curios. Actually it’s more an entire wheelbarrow of curious, many from his formative years as a recording artist (1968 - 1971).
Jewel Box clocked in at 148 tracks, which is a lot even by the standard of the boxset rarities industry. Discs one to three are taken up with unreleased demos and early studio takes while the collection concludes with 16 songs that he named as favourite deep cuts in his 2019 autobiography Me (including (I’m Gonna) Love Me Again, with duet with Taron Egerton, who portrayed young Elton in the Rocketman movie).
The question, of course, is how much Elton is too much? Fans will love wading through these alternate versions, outtakes and obscurities. But it’s a deep, deep dive – and a high degree of devotion is essential. Otherwise you may feel as if you are wandering through a hall of mirrors where all you can see is Elton John’s reflection glaring back.
